Lawmakers Work Over Weekend to Approve Cancer Presumption Fix

Wednesday, May 29, 2019 | 0

Facing a Memorial Day holiday, which also was the last day of the 2019 legislative session, lawmakers worked through the weekend to finalize some measures, including a long-awaited cancer presumption fix.

Homer Salinas
(TSAFF photo)

The final conference committee report on Senate Bill 2551, adopted by the House and the Senate on Sunday, does not include a late House floor amendment that could have threatened the bill altogether, lawmakers said. The amendment, by Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, would have made administrative penalties and attorney fee requirements apply to pending claims.

The conference committee removed that language and reverted to an earlier version of the bill, which requires the Division of Workers' Compensation to adopt rules to implement the act no later than January 2020.

The bill, engineered by Rep. Dustin Burrows and Sen. Juan Hinojosa, brings some clarity to the state's 2003 cancer presumption law, which firefighters had been demanding for years. The bill, now on its way to the governor, lists 11 types of cancer that are presumed to be work-related for firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

The measure also gives insurers more time to deny or accept cancer claims, and to request more information from the claimant and doctors. The current law allows only 15 days to accept or deny claims, and municipal insurance officials have said that did not provide enough time to verify the cause of the cancer, and many claims were denied.

Firefighters said they are satisfied with the bill.

"It's going to make it easier. They aren't going to have to go through the red tape I went through, all the hassles I went through,” Mission firefighter Homer Salinas said in a local news report.

Salinas was diagnosed with kidney cancer, but the municipal insurer has appealed the claim in Texas district court. SB 2551 would not affect Salinas, but would cover similar cancers going forward.

The bill includes renal cell cancer as one of the presumed malignancies. Current law has been called unclear, but municipal insurers have maintained that it lists only three types of cancer that are firefighting-related.

Firefighters have asked for more clarity in recent years, and 2019 appears to be a watershed moment, firefighter representatives said, in part because of a number of Texas news reports about municipalities that have fought cancer claims in court. Municipalities also fell into the crosshairs of some lawmakers because the cities opposed a property-tax reform measure that requires a local vote on tax hikes, lobbyists have said.

A fiscal analysis of the bill suggests it may cost municipalities and their insurance pools a total of $13 million annually.